Posts tagged ‘casa de boneca holandesa’

I’ve been wanting to make a dollhouse for my daughter for a long time. Victorian dollhouses are as beautiful as they are expensive. At the same time I did not want anything that take up half of her room, which is already narrow, nor did I want anything that visually made the room look messy.

That’s when I had a vision of a very tall house that I could turn and lean against the wall, hiding the messy little furnitures. Ha! A Dutch Canal (Doll)house!

I searched websites looking at buying one, new or secondhand, but no luck. So I decided to go to Ikea and see if they had any pieces I could use as a base for the dollhouse.

That’s when I found the Eket Unit System. I took my daughter so she could choose her favourite colour. The light blue, she said! Assembly is with one click only. Great!

I bought three modules of 35 x 35 x 25cm.

Next Stop: a DIY warehouse. I needed to create the front of the house. A 6mm tick plywood board, 131 x 38cm. I bought two pieces, one reserve just in case I made a mistake.

We set up the Eket Unit but left out the back part. These we will use to create the roof.

With the plywood board on the floor, I first marked with a rule and pencil the three squares 35 x 35 cm to know the exact position of the three Eket Units. Then I drew the rectangles that are the windows, the door and the silhouette of the roof.

Here is the point where you can create your own design, make a curvy roof, maybe? Six windows?

This is where you put your husband to work! Thank you! Let’s cut the wood!

After that you have to sand the edges, so everything is very smooth.

Let’s then glue the modules with double-sided tape and wooden glue.

Look at the little house! How exciting is it to see a project taking shape!

The Rounded window at the top, we did with utility knife because we did not have the right tool for this. It worked well but you need patience. It takes a while.

In fact, before you glue the front of the house with your EKET Units, you will need to prime and paint it, both sides. I took a piece of the Eket Unit to the DIY Shop to find paint that matches the original colour of the Unit. Luckily they had the right tone of blue without having to customise anything (much cheaper!).

For anyone living in the Netherlands, the one I bought was the water base Grijsblauw 1008 from Flexa. I’m sure other brands will do the same job, so go ahead and find it or choose any other colour you love.

Let’s go back to that part of the Eket Unit (the back wooden sheets) that I said not to use because now we will make the roof of the dollhouse.

Cut two squares of 24.5 x 24.5 cm.

Lay the house down and glue these two pieces together making a triangular prism shape. If necessary, score objects so that the wooden sheets do not move. Leave it overnight to dry.

The Dutch Canal Dollhouse is ready to play with!

And as far as that spare plywood board goes – I’m considering creating a second house, with a different shaped roof, so we can store our kids’ books as well and make the Kids’ room look super cool.